Strictly mistake 'unforgivable'

Tom Chambers and Camilla Dallerup could not have avoided a dance-off

The BBC has said it was "unforgivable" that the controversial outcome of Saturday's Strictly Come Dancing semi-final had not been foreseen.

BBC head of entertainment production Jon Beazley told BBC Breakfast "exceptional circumstances" had caused the scoring anomaly.

Almost 1,800 people complained after all three celebrities were put through to the final.

Unhappy viewers will be offered refunds if they request it.

Details of how to claim refunds will be available on the Strictly Come Dancing website from Tuesday.

"That's the unforgivable thing about this - we should've seen it coming," Mr Beazley said.

"The fact is we didn't so we're doing whatever we can now to sort it out."

'No fix'

He said there were many contingencies on the show, "but nobody had planned for the exceptional circumstances of a tie at the top of the leaderboard".

He added that the show was not fixed and that "nobody was complicit in any discussion about it".

The audience vote from Saturday's show will still count and the results will be revealed during this weekend's final.

The three finalists will then dance as usual and the audience will again vote, with the points from that added to those from the semi-final to determine this year's champion.

The problems encountered on Saturday's show occurred when there was a tie between dancers Lisa Snowdon and Rachel Stevens following the judges' scoring.

Because of the way the points were then awarded, actor Chambers and partner Camilla Dallerup could not have been saved from the dance-off regardless of how many public votes he had received and that was considered by the show's producers to be "unfair".

However, the problem was not realised until after voting had started.

The situation caused the programme to end 10 minutes early, forcing BBC One to fill the gap with trailers.